As bestselling reporter Sebastian Junger's account of his year spent with US forces in Afghanistan joins other first-rate books about contemporary conflicts, novelist Geoff Dyer argues that recent reportage trumps fiction in its characterisation, observation and narrative drive

Sean Smith spent two months with the 101st Airborne in Baghdad during the dog days of the American occupation. He filmed heavy fighting with the Mahdi army in Sadr City and Shulla, and powerful unmediated testimony from soldiers openly critical of the occupation

Earlier this summer, Guardian photographer
Sean Smith spent almost two months embedded with US forces in Iraq. This film shows that despite President Bush's claims of increased Iraqi cooperation in Anbar, there is still great fear and hostility against US troops

The Guardian's award-winning photographer and film-maker Sean Smith spent two months embedded with US troops in Baghdad and Anbar province. His harrowing documentary exposes the exhaustion and disillusionment of the soldiers

Guardian photographer
Sean Smith is embedded with the US military in Iraq. The pictures here were taken as the troops he is attached to were called to the site of an explosion - an improvised explosive device (IED) that had destroyed an armoured vehicle